i have tried ctrl+alt+F7, ctrl+alt+F2, ctrl+alt+F12 and can only get to a login prompt.

i can login with the username root and then i can startx but i don;t know where to go now. Can i force the setups from here. I run the linuxmce program from the multimedia start menu but this fails to regenerate orbiter skin, probably because I have yet to run the setups.

How do I get around this? i am a bit stumped why 2 identicle pieces of hardware don't operate the same.

that is weird....theyre absolutely ummm... "identicle"? all bios/firmware stuff is the same? something suggests that they arent "identicle" somehow. maybe bad hardware or one has something the other doesnt.....did you try switching the bluetooth dongles between them? or any other hardware switching to see if that made the other one not boot correctly?

they are both biostar 200n SFF boxes with Nvidia AGP Geforce 6200 graphics cards (exact same model in both), AMD sempron 2300 chips and 512mb ram.I have gone through the bios and everything looks the same on both machines. I have tried swapping the memory in the 2 machines and that doesn't seem to have any effect, I actually have a 3rd biostar 200n box and this has the same problem again and stops at exactly the same place.

I was getting worried I wouldn';t be able to sort it after spending a day messing around trying things

I now have another problem though.

the AVWizard started fine when first installing on the MDs, now though I want to plug one into a tv with svid, so i will need to change the resolution using the avwizard, problem is I can't get it to run. I have tried holding down shift on start up and by clicking change resolution in the linuxmce manager but when it restarts it never gets to the wizard, it just seems to get stuck on amessage about a helper script then flashes to a black screen and then back to the message and just does this over and over again.

It is as though it tries to go to the avwizard but then fails - what is happening here? all three boxes are showing the same behaviour!

these problems turned out to be mainly due to a dodgy router, once a new one was fitted I did a fresh install to be on the safe side and things now seem to be working correctly.

one other part of the problem is that a tv that one of the MDs I have is to plug in to doesn;t seem to detect the svideo output from the graphics card. i have tried on other tvs and the MD box works fine its just the tv i want to use that wont detect the output and change the tv over to a\v mode.the tv works fine with a dvd player and if I connect a vcr the tv detects the vcr and if I plug the svideo from the MD into the VCR I can then get the MD screen on the tv but I would prefer not to.the main part of this problem is I have lost the remote and the buttons on the front don't give the option to change to AV mode so for now I am a bit stuck untill I can find a remote.

just a bit strange that the tv can't detect the input from the MDs nvidia graphics card - anyone have any idea why this might be?